Serenity shifted to his normal human form. There wasn’t any reason to go to the effort of his disguise, but at the same time he didn’t want to scare anyone and be mistaken for a monster. Zon seemed effectively completely human-settled.

The houses were sturdy, well built and well maintained, but that was really all Serenity could compliment them for. They were clearly built to be sturdy rather than interesting; they were even all painted the same shade of off-white. The paint was flaking off, revealing the same color below. Serenity recognized what was happening; it looked like some type of whitewash. It wasn’t something he’d seen often in modern America, but it was something he’d seen frequently after Earth’s death.

This wasn’t a poor village, but it also didn’t look like they were dripping with wealth; Serenity didn’t see any significant signs of magic in the village. It was possible that he was simply missing it because of the heavy Time affinity, but he suspected it simply wasn’t there.

What wealth there was in the village clearly went into the barn and the road. That made some sense; they were almost certainly also the source of the village’s income. The pens outside the barn showed clear signs of repair but were all intact as far as Serenity could tell.

Serenity trotted up to one of the houses. He couldn’t hear anything moving inside, so he moved on to the next house. It clearly had a fire lit inside; he could see the glow of the fire through the shuttered windows. This time, he tapped on the door.

There was no immediate response, so he tapped again, a little harder. This time it sounded like a proper knock, clearly audible.

“Go away!” A strained voice called from the other side of the door. It was clear but weak.

Serenity frowned. He’d leave if the other person wanted, but he did want to try one more time. That voice really didn’t sound good. “Are you okay in there?”

“A stranger?” Surprise was obvious in the tone. The voice sounded a little stronger but still not strong. “The saktiin has me. It’s too late for me, save yourself. Leave this town.”

Saktiin? That sounded familiar but Serenity couldn’t immediately place it.

Xarx mentioned an old tradition by that name shortly before the bandit attack.

Aide’s prompt refreshed Serenity’s memory. It was something about deliberately not Tiering up to avoid powering up dungeons or something like that. Serenity had no idea how it could “have” someone. Unless there was someone else in there?

“Are you sure you don’t need help?” Serenity wasn’t sure what he could do. Could he even affect what was happening here? It seemed like he could, and he knew time travel was possible, but he was certain he hadn’t spent the kind of energy that was needed for it. “What’s saktiin anyway?”

A bark of disbelieving laughter came from inside the house. “If you don’t know that, stranger, run as far as you can. Maybe it’ll keep you safe.”

Serenity tried one last time. “I need a place to sleep tonight. Do you-”

“Leave or I’ll open the door.” The voice sounded angry now. “And then where will you be?”

“Right here, apparently,” Serenity muttered. It was clear he wasn’t going to get any shelter here. “Is there another house where I’d be better received?”

There was a long pause; Serenity had already turned away and was several steps away from the house when he heard the door open behind him. He turned back around to face the house.

A woman was framed in the doorway, leaning heavily on the door handle for support. Bruises both old and new mottled her skin. “Stranger. Your laughter at our loss-” The woman facing him stopped and frowned. “You carry magic. You glow with magic. St-”

She swayed on her feet.

Serenity stepped forward to catch her, keeping her from collapsing to the ground. He didn’t see any injuries that should have put her in such a state, but if whatever had beaten her had hit her in the head it would explain everything.

It was far from the first time that Serenity had wished he had some aptitude for real healing. There was little he could do. “Do you have a healer? Is there someone I can take you to?”

She gave a choking laugh. “Foolish, ignorant boy. I was the healer. Now the saktiin has me. You should run before it has you as well. Run in case it isn’t already too late.”

Serenity shook his head. “You’ll have to explain that later. For now, let’s get you somewhere you can lie down.” After that, he’d want to check her for a bleed in her brain. He couldn’t fix bleeding, but he could relieve pressure, at least. Not that it would help her if she continued to bleed; bleeding out was still deadly. He wondered why the saktiin were enough of a boogeyman to have her hallucinate them when injured; they certainly hadn’t sounded like anything that would be so terrifying when Xarx mentioned them.

Of course, religion could do strange things and so could head injuries.

Serenity looked down at the woman; she’d stopped moving, but she was still breathing. She’d fallen asleep in his arms. That wasn’t a good sign at all. Passing out with a head injury was a very bad sign, in fact.

Serenity carried her inside the house. It was small, two rooms and a small kitchen area. Her bedroom stank of a chamber pot that hadn’t been properly cleaned out in too long; he’d have to deal with that once he was certain she wasn’t going to just up and die on him.

Serenity laid her down on the bed, then sat next to her. The bed was soft and cushioned, which made Serenity grateful that this was a sheep area. She must have been well off, even so; a two room house for one person was unusual. It probably doubled as her place of work; that would make sense for a healer.

Serenity knew that little luxuries like a really comfortable bed were the first things that he would buy in a place like this. There were no other beds, so it was clearly intended for her and not for a patient.

Serenity concentrated and started trying to feel his way through the young woman’s damaged body as best he could. He didn’t have the Life Affinity at all, which meant that the primary methods he’d always used simply didn’t work.

There had to be a way. His liquid affinity was terrible and his solid affinity wasn’t much better; trying to combine them to see what was going on was foolish.

Serenity groaned and forced himself to think. When he examined himself, he used his Arcane and Essence Affinities. They no longer appeared on his Status, but he knew they both existed and were very good.

They were his Vital Affinities, so it made sense that he’d be able to examine himself with them. On the other hand, essence was also what made up monsters and with careful examination he was starting to see it in other things as well. It would make sense if it were the actual building block of the universe, or at least what matter was made of, wouldn’t it?

And if it were the building block for matter, shouldn’t he be able to use his essence affinity as though it were Life affinity to see what was going on with the unconscious woman?

He’d have to adapt the spells, but if he was right and Essence was truly the building block for everything, it should work. Dungeons used it to create life; that should be close enough.

It was a good thing that the spells he wanted to use were sensory only; they would be safe, even if he messed something up.

It took hours and he messed up repeatedly. Fortunately, all that did was create nonsense images and make Aide complain at Serenity for messing up the filters he was maintaining on Serenity’s sight.

It worked better when Serenity started to create it as a three-dimensional model instead of seeing it; that was something he’d always done externally in the spell, but Aide guided him on how to build a model using Aide’s hardware. It was Serenity’s hardware, really, but he still didn’t quite think of it that way.

Eventually, Serenity turned his old Life-sensing examination spell into something that used Essence to see the inside of a being’s body. It would probably work on inanimate things as well. It was slow, cumbersome, low resolution, and inefficient but it did work.

The bruised woman slept through it all.

Eventually, Serenity was able to see inside her head. The good news was that there was no significant intracranial bleeding.

The bad news was that she had tiny nodules of something Serenity couldn’t identify scattered along her brain stem. Serenity examined the rest of her brain and found several other concentrations; they weren’t evenly spread.

Serenity’s first thought was cancer, but it didn’t look like cancer.

If nothing else, cancer didn’t try to pull mana out of a spell used to analyze it and it certainly didn’t try to piggyback a spell on the analysis spell. These nodules did both.

Serenity stopped it, of course. His Arcane affinity had always been high; at whatever it was now with even his nascent Aspect, there was no way his spell could be overridden by anything short of a skilled mage, and these things were not skilled mages. There were a lot of them, but they were weak. They also didn’t deliberately coordinate with each other.

Serenity made a quick pass over the woman’s body and found that many of the bruises were from collections of these nodes. They weren’t limited to skin damage, either; he found damage affecting many of her internal organs. Everywhere he looked he found mana levels that were much lower than they should have been; she was clearly not tier zero, but only a tier zero human should have mana that low.

Whatever it was, it was eating the woman’s mana supply and using it to reproduce and spread, very much like a disease, and it was going to kill her soon if he didn’t do anything.

Serenity sighed. He’d seen magical diseases before, but they were rare. They were exactly the reason certain types of healers were prohibited in some civilizations and were one of the reasons certain of those civilizations tolerated destructive healers. Constructive healers had a hard time with things that absorbed their mana and used it to grow. Destructive healers didn’t have that problem.

This one looked manufactured. It wasn’t a guarantee, but the odds were good. Very few natural magical plagues attacked a healer the way this one did; they might take advantage of the healing but they didn’t try to spread to the healer through a spell. That didn’t line up with everything else the nasty little invader was doing, which meant that it was almost certainly added by someone.

He set himself to taking care of the problem; the little magically-infused bacteria that made up the disease were quite susceptible to Death magic. It would take a long time and he would have to be careful, but he had all the time in the world. This world still seemed completely disconnected from his own time.

A constructive healer to handle the remaining damage would be good, but he might just have gotten lucky with that. The unconscious woman had said something about being a healer, hadn’t she?